On Realism and Pancakes

Hollywood gives us paper cut-out heroes, archetypal characters from the tradition of Greek epics. They hold our larger-than-life expectations, fight against impossible odds, make inhuman sacrifices, and in the end, things always work out. To them, their lives are already written and their decisions are guided by higher fate. There's never any uncertainty when Ripley goes back to save Newt, or when T-800 melts himself in the foundry, or when Jack Bauer tortures a suspect for intel; they do what has to be done. Sarah Connor Chronicles is the opposite of everything we've come to expect from the entertainment industry. The FOX show challenges us with a study of realism in our modern mythology of science fiction. This magic realism is a clear departure from the march of the ordinary, and the discordance may be the cause of the show's downfall.

Let's start with the small things. Life is in the details, as they say. One of the first complains about the show was about pancakes. Sarah Connor cooks pancakes for her son, the future savior of human kind. Sarah Connor, the stone-cold bad ass who blew up Cyberdyne in T2, who faced down two killer cyborgs from the future, is making pancakes. And then she's packing lunch for John, maybe a PB&J sandwich. John Connor goes grocery shopping. Absurd? No, the only absurdity is our willingness to accept these characters as super human. Have you ever wondered how Picard could pee while wearing a full body uniform? I have. What do you think goes through Sarah Connor's mind when she wakes up? Would she wake up every morning worrying about the impending nuclear holocaust? In Kafka's The Metamorphosis, the character Gregor woke up one morning and found himself transformed into a giant insect; his first thoughts were about the bad weather and his crappy job. I'm guessing Sarah Connor thinks about what to have for breakfast.

What else would be on Sarah Connor's mind? In many sci-fi and fantasy stories, the protagonist undergoes a transformation from normal to extraordinary. We can see examples in The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. Something happens to the hero that completely alters her perspective of the world, and in essence changes who she is. In the intro to Terminator 1, we see Sarah Connor, naive, fumbling, at her job as a waitress, at home doing her hair and makeup with her roommate -- her normal life. At the end of the movie, she fights for survival against a time-traveling killer cyborg, who was sent to murder her and her unborn son, the future savior of humanity.

In T1, these two Sarah Connors are different people; the chasm between them is so deep that one could not even imagine living the other's life. But both Sarahs are present in the Fox show: the normal Sarah: mother, woman, human, and the extraordinary Sarah: fugitive, guardian, hero. One Sarah tries to raise her son to be a strong, capable man. The other prepares her son to be the leader of humankind in a resistance against the machines. One Sarah tries to protect her son against sketchy girlfriends and unhealthy relationships. The other tries to protect him against cyborg assassins. One Sarah worries about getting breast cancer and is afraid of losing the closeness that she shares with her son (She even had a dream where cyborg Cameron made pancakes for John Connor!) The other worries about a malicious AI that wants to see the world burn. One Sarah makes friends with the neighbor. The other trusts absolutely nobody. One Sarah is paranoid, chasing random patterns and UFOs. The other shoulders the fight against a future that seems inevitable. On the FOX show, the two personas are meshed together into one identity. She did not leave behind her normal life, though she is no longer naive nor clumsy. To her, the mundane and the fantastic are not in different worlds; they coexist in one.

Often, people see the future as depicted in movies and shows: a fantasy, another world, something we watch for a few hours and then go back outside. The year 2009 must have seemed impossibly distant and exotic; and yet here we are. Our future is not fantasy, and the things that only existed in our imaginations have a tendency to catch up with us sooner than we expect.

I think the future will be all right, as long as there will be pancakes.